When she held me, I felt like an earthquake,
shrapnel cutting quick to the bone.
I’m disaster, an unknown
kind of danger is the most dangerous

When he held me, I felt like a riptide,
all control ran out the door.
With the *** and cappuccinos
I felt out of place in my new home

When she held me, I felt disgusting,
every move my own betrayal.
Yes, she hurt like a gunshot
but I did this to myself

When he held me, I felt strange,
like I should give my whole self.
He never asked, I’m thankful.
I don’t want to ruin everything else

When she held me, I felt like a secret,
like I was something small and wild.
In a room of screaming children,
we were something invincible

He never held me, but that’s alright.
Someone tell him I understand.
Take it slow, like we’re new friends.
I’m alive for once

No one touch me, I don’t want it.
Stop breathing down my neck.
My throat fills with *****,
But the hands never rest

No one touch me, leave me alone.
Stop pressing on my back.
There are thumbprints on my wrist bones
and handprints on my thighs

Don’t touch me when you aren’t here.
So many years have passed.
Is it trauma? I don’t care.
The filthy feeling always lasts

Don’t touch me when you aren’t here.
Nobody ever has to know.
When you’re sitting by your lonesome
Nobody cares, you’re on your own

Nobody cares, you’re on your own

Most heavenly of places, this world now
Of endless beauties, a sight that wows
They're statuesque and wax-like, but hey don't fret
No wrinkles to combat, nor ripples of fat

Gazing into their arresting green eyes
That of the rabbit's, resemblance lies
Uncanny it is, this puzzling scene
Manufactured they are, from the same jellyfish gene

And since its time to seek paradise,
My wandering hands caress the prize
To search for weakness, now I must
No amount of fondling, stirs any lust

I've come so far, and this is what perfection costs?
The smoothest of skin, has left all thumbprints lost

I've been watching you from the nightstand,
Eyes closed,
But hearing, feeling
Each rat tremor on top of cheap carpet
Covered in cat **** and ***** stains.

You have been sleeping too long,
Eyelids turning to flakes of skin,
Feeding your floorboard friends.
I have seen your fingers curl into messy knots of
Purple thumbprints and veins reaching
For the ceiling and roof.

You left me plugged into the wall,
And I have inched closer to my own death
With each misses phone call and text,
My predisposed convulsions.

I just wanted you to know
Your mother called today
To ask for the new street address,
The landlord says the rent is 8 days late,
But your boyfriend is ill concerned with your state of health,
In fact,
He left the state
And bought a new haircut and identity.

I've read the news, and it's red
with painted lip prints, and the stain
of stranger thumbprints. They're not
mine. Neither of them. They belong,
lip and thumb, paint and stranger,
singularly to those others who don't
read or write such things. They may
bleed, them, but the blood isn't red,
or crimson, or cardinal, or scarlet.
Pick a shade of red, and it isn't that,
at least not until it's too, too late
to stanch. The bully's standard is to take
it all, all of it except the fall crisp that led
into this strangely warmer winter. I took it,
and I saved it in my bones to prepare,
but the cold didn't come. Not like we
were used to. I'm told the bully wears
what he takes with a dashing style. See it,
that royal blue that outfits him? The flowing
robes? The gold. I've been robbed. We have
been. Not of things, but of a view. A view
with no room for us in its downside-up
very periscope-unlike perspective.
There's no upside to the up-down
and just around the corner trips
I take. To the grocer. To the bar. To
the five and dime. It's fattened up
to a dollar. And the slimming newsprint
costs more than what I get
without the paper. I don't
get it, not the print, not the paper, not
the red lip prints, not the thumbprints
left by strangers, not the news
I've read and I'm reading.

Lights and colors, Lights and colors dwindle in numbers

Set a step in coordination

Fully exasperated

nonsense passes by, through images

Lenses smudged by illusive thumbprints

Who are you

Are you speaking cordially

heart trusted intuition and guts mustered

Seeping into the depths of darkness

see a surprise unseen by eyes of seekers and juveniles

Founded a resolve

Sturdy foundation like a trunk of a tree

Feed me turds quench my thirst with poison

Wrap a child sleeping soundly in a blanket of lava

Let's follow the righteous side even when full of lies

Stray from a darker path were the light of truth is easier to find

Follow the good where everything a light

and turn so you won't have to face the knife

Inject a form of lies and cast the mirage of truth over your eyes

Your fingertips wandered
The forests of my skin,
for a year, three months and one week.

Your kisses lingered around my neck,
Pearls strung delicately across a haphazard creation.
Your thumbprints were inked across my ribcage,
Polka dots on my least favorite sweater.
Your fingers mined gems from the ridges of my hipbones,
Diamonds found within the depths of my self-loathing.
Your lips planted daisies the crooks of my collarbones,  
Black-holes of misery turned into a rainbow of gardens.

I have not felt your embrace
Or heard your voice,
In a year, eleven months, a week and four days.

The pearls have been replaced
With the noose of your bitterness.
Your thumbprints have become plum-colored bruises,
Diamonds have turned to coal,
And, like a fool,
I mistook daisies for venus fly traps-
They catch every thought of you,
And I'm now I'm closed in.

Do you wanna hang out?

We can fingerpaint now.

'Cuz I know that you love the stuff

that reminds you of being young.


Witnessing the sunset (the new day will await us)

We can use our thumbprints (all over the plain walls)

And we can bend our knuckles (paired up to shape hearts)

We won't always be amateurs (we can fingerpaint now)


We're never growing older, there's nothing anyone can do.

Your hand may be in mine, your soul deep in mine too.

Do you wanna hang out?  We can fingerpaint now.

'Cuz I know you love the things that make you feel young again.

i lost your direction
with my back against you i begged you
to unzip the sky

i was parched without shade
you looked like destiny
a mirage in a thirsty throat

i kissed the ground and broke my mouth
spit teeth that bled your name
but you came no closer

the pain was not divine
perception rose in red welts around my lips
mountains of flesh that held no beauty

i poured myself into this strange espousal of a world
cold cloudy glass
forever rounding walls
that held me in smeared thumbprints

on a hot day i am static
i dry slowly, paint
i am the ever madonna the lost woman
heroine heroine heroine
corrupt word that bursts like an aneurysm on the tongue
spreads like a warm solution

and we bred closer
fixing flesh on the bones of our connection
meet me when i come to you
don’t grow old with me
i can never change

the leash nerves held
keeping you that same size
until the sky seized with the threat
rain rain rain
and i was no prophet
just a woman you thought you could save
if your feet could make the steps

but i am not lost
i’m just waiting for you
you can find me under broken clouds
you can save me to soothe
your own self

R.J Calzonetti


Screaming cross the skyscraper’s windbreaker tapering

Aether vapour- trailblazing ****-sapien wafers

Of machinations psychotropic doppelgängers

Aristotle throttling menagerie’s philosophically hypnotic obelisks

Mind-boggling astronomical chronological esophagus

Antioxidants phosphorus catastrophic mitochondria

Beyond anaconda onomatopoeia

Of hallucinogenic Armageddon biblical umbilical cords

Swarming northern lights of aurora borealis

The chalice a battleground of Evangelion belladonna

Metalica candelabra swallowing the monochrome Hanukkah

Of a cold winter’s eldritch disintegration photosynthesis

Of innocent infinity stretching wretched beckoning requiem

The words that fall upon my page, are really just a shallow grave

Of the dawn of nighttime in my eyes, calm upon the twilight sun

Wrong is done draped on the blood moon wraiths

Skyscraped fields dusk a hollow thud below the dunes

That thumps the consumption of our fate, fumes to glow in darkness loom

Left blind in light of day you cannot see, the little pieces silver sheen

For blinding light may fade to grey, and I will never have my way

Nightfalls on another daybreak, dawning darkness, sundown on another day

Twilight plays with sparkling haze, the sky a wildfire made ablaze in patchwork scarecrows

Who etch rainbows black as a heart of coal, sold flatlining railroads

Gold wraithlike halos of stained-glass cathedrals unreal in the fever-dream of human beings

Bleeding Elysium from the seabed of dead worlds, gourds of incorporeal cornucopias

Born orchestra morsels of sorrowful oracles predicting crucifixion of ellipsis’ antithesis


(MC) Aurora


Absonant  as my pen writes the twilight, the red swallowed on horizon and bright

As through a sea of blood under my feet and shrinking mast of my mighty ship

A shadow I make on that red snow and peep into my heart’s hollow

It’s deep as much as my pen spake of grief.

I blinded in that last light and hurled like a beast dreading the songs of holy lies

That have just pained in bright and made me grieve.

They dragged me on my wings and deplumate  me as so fallen humans

They wrenched my limbs and rive my heart out and flinger me in air and I laid forever

On the stones that dank my blood.

I wait for the troth  of  demise but betrayed as it didn’t come to detract,

I laid when the horizon grinned red on my face and poured the last ale

And brutally drank the last sip of me.



R.J Calzonetti


People are sleeping under the blankets of a tranquil streetlamp

A sunflower in the damp bed of concrete

Soon they’ll be pushing up daisies

Underneath the foundation of what I stand for

Nip the bud of the flower pedalling the root of all evil like fallen leaves

Breeding paraplegic freedom from the pollen melancholic

Anarchistic polycrystalline shapeshifters drifting vilified

Buried alive like asphalt constellations crowning metallic gallows alcoholic in my solitude

See the clouds bury the ground in half a heaven’s heartbeat

Limbo’s limitless abyss the photosynthesis of the sepulchral diablo

Revenants of redemption dancing with death

Evanescent in its bioluminescent crescent moon spooning illuminated illustrations

Of Himalayan mayhem cremated avarice of ethereal onomatopoeia unravelling catacombs in God’s palindromes

Homeopathic saplings decapitated in the dismembered September wastelands defibrillator

Invigorating the nightshade white wraiths plane-walkers of Apocrypha documenting entropy

Pent up sentience avenging the endless demigods of discombobulated proclamations nocturne graceless, octaves eldritch, evangelic

Elegant elevators to flights of staircases where the air is fragrant with the fragments of stagnant stained glass asterisks

Written gospels to masquerade hostage to the faith the man misplaced the sacred hate, the passageways of apathy apostrophe

Apartheid of serpentine survivors carving smiles on the sidewalks

Farming diamonds and their detox

Arming giants like a phoenix

Carnal nihilists with their secrets

Stardust quiet as the bleachers

Start defiant still a reject

Art discipled to our freedom

Shattered hearts pick up the pieces

Jigsaw puzzles, smothered treasons

Sow the seeds and **** the reaper

Even legions rhyme and reason

Tattered flags without a penance

Good men do not go to heaven

Buy your burden at 7-11

Your exit is the only the next entrance

Resurrection prepubescent

Asymmetric biomechanics

Anguish to be reprimanded

Megalomaniac in our sabbath

Living life is just a sentence

Psalms of seance death’s senescence

Baptize vengeance lest it ventures into heaven

Ventriloquist omniscience of rhythmic equilibrium

Earthly hurricanes reemerging insurgent as the sugarcane purgatory

Primordials metamorphosis contorting rigour Mortis oracles horoscope cloaked in cloaca hallucinations

Induced irradiated amalgamated retaliatory incorporeal chlorophyll

Born from the sorcerers' spell, the cathedral of doubt

The only darkness is within oneself, light shed within a holy shell

Isolation is a lonely hell, scythes of moonlight blight of bells

Nightingales fail to halo word of mouth

Enveloped in the clouds cast shadows hex

But resurrection cannot hide from the eyes of death

Fresh as babies breath

Rank as the body festers effigies

Bless the Nephilim the questions beck

And call for some god to collect the rest

Is there any answer?

Even growth can be a cancer

Lifeless corpses once were dancers

Devils waltz on top of canopies

Heaven’s hands have touched serenity

****** brands that crushed His enemies

Stained glass sanguine dismantled entropy

Calamity ran dry insanity dabbling in humanity

Unravelling the candy wrapper saplings of happiness

Pitch black irradiant dull edges sharpening archangels, darkness reincarnating

Blinding bioluminescent glistening abyssal rakshasa sarcophagus parting monarchies

Metamorphosis coruscating fornication immortalization Tartarean

Reverberating ****-sapien scintillating hurricanes palpitation circulating ricocheting oblivion

Shining crepuscular homunculus dully illustrious

Sunless avatars, mannequins of Abaddon stygian as fallen leaves on the breeze of Avalon Evangelion

Incarceration breeding Elysium’s jailors in the cathedral of double helixes

Bethlehem's’ new genesis of Lucifer’s crucifixion

Brighter than a fallen star

Mourning in the dark

Doppelganger apostles night stalkers of phosphorous

Pockmarked arcanum bloodstained in gravestone Salem

Where the braves’ halos dined on maelstroms alone

Heirs succeeding failures of the empty throne

Filled with nothings’ own

Brimming bound by Babylonian poems

Deus ex Machina's apocalypse coughing prophets of Samsara blossoming diabolic

Life is but a Holocaust

Death the moment God forgot

Breath the only psalm we sought

Kept within a hollow box

Shedding devils, angelic, lost

Finding metamorphosis


(MC) Aurora


A world often synonymous with beauty on the horizon,

Meet my eyes you mourned demon load the strength on thee.

Crestfallen light on your wrist burns down your girth

And you can plead, just plead your twilight sun.

Watch the dead sea swallow you in the salts of agony

And drown in the anguish, hundreds of angelic bloodsheds,

Press hold of the thumbprints on your throat, you can't roar.

Sore lugubrious melancholy aired atmosphere,

And downhearted souls dispirited dragons dragged along.

The sob grim hiding in a blue funk rusty smog choking wind,

The nyctophilliac animals howl long the cold-blooded love song

In your lungs and burn.

It's the twilight sun,

Just that twilight sun.

window leaning on an old book the cold winter air
spilling into the room like it has been waiting for years
for this moment, starless sky and illuminated hands
colored blotches speaking in the hushed tone of
unobtrusive shades
there is a single cigarette packed away in the stories
and trinkets, it is whispering sweet nothings
in my ear

and you
you have been lurking in the hallways
your hands, thumbprints, lips
etched into the window glass
so every time i look to see the world
you will be there

Your bittersweet presence
brushes chalk dust across my skin
because i desire you here
but i think that is all

His eyes are like black beetles rolled onto their backs, thick legs like lashes flickering in the movement it requires to take me in;
And I am exposed- again- to the disease they spread from living underneath the foundations of so many homes, not unknown, exactly, but pardoned as 'harmless’ and left
to live in the crawl spaces, where his real eyes roll between the cobwebs.

Therein the innocence of beauty, with all her God given curves, is curled up inside the belly of that glutton, and the stomach acid does the devil’s work in decomposing her;

We all have bruises on our necks, blooming in lavender colored thumbprints where he turned our faces forcibly away from him;
There is nothing so damning as a woman who has made eye contact with those insects,
Bite
Your
Tongue
Girl,

This is not about you.

This is about the ‘stumbling block’ you became to him,
This is about the disastrous eventuality of outliving your usefulness.
This is about the godforsaken body you were given to spite and entice him with,
And your ability to keep it carefully hidden.

We will not bite our tongues.
We are not the amalgamation of soft feminine lines, rent into the shapes you like them best,
Or the shapes you hate,
Or the constantly transforming flame of your carnality, with it's cruel hands around your throat.

We are not our bodies;
But they are ours.
We are not our bodies,
And we will not be easily devoured.

I was never this soft
So breakable
I was a hard cover book
Strong and new
That you bent back to read
Allowing myself to be so easy.

Now my spine is broken
Cover clearly used
Abandoned,
Alone,
Abused
How could you?

My story remains
With pages still intact
Someone else will come along
Gentle enough
To repair my broken back.

I’m fragile
Susceptible to further damage
Cracked down the middle
Barely hanging
Slowly healing

Does this story get a sequel?
Another chance for something real
I’m fearful I’ll never recover
With pages badly wilted
Discolored
Torn, and bent back.

Greasy thumbprints
Smeared along my text
Leaving permanent imprints
On my once pretty print.

My story has changed too.
How could this remain a fairytale,
After consuming the forbidden fruit?

I’m half dead
And my book
Has been read through
By someone who skipped ahead
Just to know the end
And stupidly,
I let them.

Thinking that if they knew
All the secrets of my story
The struggles
The success
My journey
They would love me
Not leave me.

If only I kept my chapters safe
Knowing I’m worthy
For a slower pace
Not rushed through
And read in a day.

You might have read the ending
Little do you know
That was the preface.

Better yet,
I’ll remove you completely
Editor’s revision says
There is no space for you here.

Backspace, delete.
Now you're just history
All that is left
Is to empty the trash bin.

I’ve read the news, and its red
with painted lip prints, and the stain
of stranger thumb prints. They’re not
mine. Neither of them. They belong,
lip and thumb, paint and stranger,
singularly to those others who don’t

read or write such things. They may
bleed them, but the blood isn’t red,
or crimson, or cardinal, or scarlet.
Pick a shade of red, and it isn’t that,
at least not until it’s too, too late
to stanch. The bully’s standard is to take

it all, all of it except the fall crisp that led
into this strangely warmer winter. I took it,
and I saved it in my bones to prepare,
but the cold didn’t come. Not like we
were used to. I’m told the bully wears
what he takes with a dashing style. See it,

that royal blue that outfits him? The flowing
robes? The gold. I’ve been robbed. We have
been. Not of things, but of a view. A view
with no room for us in its downside-up
very periscope-unlike perspective.
There’s no upside to the up-down

and just around the corner trips
I take. To the grocer. To the bar. To
the five and dime. It’s fattened up
to a dollar. And the slimming newsprint
costs more than what I get
without the print. I don’t

get it, not the print, not the paper, not
the red lip prints, not the thumbprints
left by strangers, not the news
I’ve read and I’m reading.

I once heard a story
A story of a man, he
Worked under the sun’s scorching fingers
Still he lingered
Labored
And at the end of the day
By faith
Gave up his very best
Leaving the not-so-good rest
For himself.


Through his actions
He left
Something
Something for us to think about
Something for us to imitate
And recreate
And apply
To our daily lives
This man
By faith
He gave his best
And so do we.


I once heard a story
A story of a woman, she
Was blessed with beauty
Donned in a robe
Of purple and gold
Hair combed with Persian oil
Piercing dark eyes
And, knowing that she could die
Took heart
Swallowed her fears and
Saved a people
            a nation
            a race
By faith
She took courage
And so do we.


I once heard a story
A story of a boy, he
Had nothing to offer
Just
Five cold loaves and two little fish
That boy, unselfishly
Generously
Humbly gave
Everything he had
By faith
He gave everything
He had
And so do we.


All these people
Led by example
And left thumbprints
On our minds
On our hearts
They left
Something
Something called


The trail that you blaze
The memory you create
The footprints you leave
The mark you place
The “I was here” sort
The dent you make
The story people will tell
For generations
And generations
To come


So, wake up!
Shake off the shackles
Break those chains
Tear down the walls
That have been imprisoning you
Holding you
Keeping you
From being who you were called to be
For that is true freedom


Arise from where you are
You chosen people
You royal priesthood
You holy nation
You children belonging
To the Most High


Raise your voices like trumpets
Shout aloud
Do not hold back
For you have been set apart
Redeemed
Renewed
Reborn and
Redefined


It’s time
To be the salt
And the light
You were made to be
Not conforming
Not compromising
To the pattern


It’s time
To start being
A leader who serves
Protects
Loves
A leader by example
A leader through actions
And words


It’s time to make your mark
It’s time to throw the dart
It’s time to blaze your trail
It’s time to write your story
It’s time to quit hiding
It’s time to leave
It’s time to leave a legacy.

One room for entry
sign says slow rides ahead
A savage concrete flood

White and bright with fluorescent illumination

A suit asks for thumbprints
ringing of communication
Waves linked
wires answered

Small plastic cup extended
meant for a child's play set
Inside a billion dollar industry

Swallow it cold for some reprieve
it settles hard and nauseating

Panic inside alien euphoria

Lines crossed for a new salvation
faces spill forward
A spiritual inquisition
free wills final folly
Magnified for judgement
at the cost of dime and soul

I keep the pocket watch you gave me,
and it's still ticking,
ticking.

It's there beneath the pictures
with ripped edges and thumbprints on the gloss,
where I'm smiling straight into the flash
and you, you're just looking at me,
like you didn't know someone could be so happy
in a cramped booth that smelled like
asphalt and felt like 50's music.

It's there next to the pressed flowers
with missing petals and broken stems,
the ones you gave me the day before Valentine's,
because you wanted them to bloom but
they bloomed a day late, and you
waited for them til midnight because you refused
to believe that teenage romance
doesn't have to be punctual.

It's there in the old shoebox
with the missing cover and faded paint on the sides,
that I kept all the postcards in,
from all the times you went away and said
you missed me,
and I couldn't write back because
I remembered you said that my words are my heart
and I was scared
to write poems about forever.

Addicted to this life
and all of its decadence
There's a table in the back
for otherworldly spies
where they drown you in powder
leave you choking on agents
that will destroy your mind
so they can apply thumbprints to retinas
leaving you in dispose
denying every lie you've ever told.
The truth will find an outlet in your demise
What you thought was real
What you thought you could feel
A confusion of senses
distilled through holy water
Blinded by strobe lights
and immobilized by birth rights
You may leave when you want,
but, then again,
would you really want to?

When you see his mother
You remember.
You remember the fear in your eyes
Terrified at the thought of being *****.
You remember the trembling in your voice
For the times he sent earthquakes through your body.
You remember the efforts it took to restore your soul
You were not an easy fix.
You took more time that he gave you
When he had his way with you
A child.
He got his way with a lot of things
He got his way when you were too fearful to take him to court
He got his way when he left no trace of evidence behind
He got his way when your father refused to see him again
But when you see his mother,
Roses in your hair
All dressed in black
Teardrops stain your cheeks like thumbprints
Pressed hard against your face.
You are not dressed for her, no
But for her brother
But for your grandfather.
When you see his mother
The damage he has done to her is comparable
To the damage he has done to you.
She cannot walk out the door
Without knowing her son is a child molester.
You cannot walk out the door
Without feeling guilty for what you have done to her.
It wasn't your fault, what happened to you
But in an odd way
You believe what happened to her
Was.
So together, synchronized
You paste on a face
You put yourself together
Opposite sides of the East Coast
Yet so in tune.
When you see his mother,
You forget yourself for a moment
As a river of guilt gushes out of your soul
You want to run
To, from, with her
You cannot escape.
To, from, with her
Your guilt lies.

The skin sloughs ever so slowly
As it parts from the blade and body
Slipping into the pail of past identity

On top I can see the newest addition
Eyes burning with golden bursts
Accentuated by cool emerald outlines
Staring back at their owner
Accusatory
The narrow pupil dilated in question
"Why go blind?"

I ignored the orbs
Instead turning back to the business
At hand
Where I was carefully removing
Fingernails and thumbprints
One by one joining the flesh
That had once been me

My eyes glared at me
I stared back
Empty sockets dripping
Drip
Drip
"Never have I seen more clearly
For without my skin I truly feel
Without my eyes I cannot cry
Nor nails nor prints to conceal
The real me is not outside
He's inside wanting only to heal"

I love the way books cannot be
unread, cannot erase the sweet oils
and thumbprints like black oak tree rings
they are there for all the slivers
of sunlight and literary cafune
soft knuckles pressed into their
spines
they remind me that while I am not new
I can remain unknown, that though
opened by some I am neither novel lying in wait
or closed into his old bookshelves,
a thin draft in a library of what-ifs
he did not get to k e e p you
however you did, you did
found your
way into other hands, without much grace, albeit,
baltering from home to home
a solivigant prose--

this way, and that, small bind
paperback.

It hurts where? Yes, it will hurt everywhere.
Stethoscope there in the room with stainless surfaces and a ticking,
No it is a tapping behind the walls stirring the blood snared along with something inside of me.
Potions and cures, then sealed containers of flowers and beakers locked away remain motionless.
As if hiding, as if afraid.
Rather, enlightened of the cells I carry.


Befriend the gallops of illusion.
Four horsemen down from the failing ceiling.
Postmarked dollhouse, scars on the ceiling, echoes joined to you at the hip.
Scars of the disease you carry and sprinkle onto chests like so many children's agony.

Hooves carry eyes to scan this barren nest of yours.

There,
the ruins of something innocent.

And there,
the photos of some memory discarded.

Assured with the reality that creation of life is but fantasy here, unattainable.


The innocent fall.

Smiling as they enter, your charms masking the smell of your closet's skeletons, a door revolving unhinges.

The coins you receive, coated in thumbprints and neglect. Mirrors of your frame.
A currency, your own currency of moans and gnashing.
Your small teeth becoming your permanent incisors.
Crumbling.
Powder then paste, yet you remain alive.

They become your master for sixty nine dollars.
They became your lover for want of a token.

Tokens forged in the booth appearing near noon.

Nothing else or again.

Then the drummer moves to erase the music of your past.

A vat overfilled with murmurs and spittle.

Your finished symphony.

There’s something to be said
for the nostalgic banality
of fading industries,

standing in line to buy stamps,
request blank checks,
or updating vehicle registrations.

Reminders that we seldom truly know
what nothing feels like.

Thumbprints on the underside of reality
two steps left of the center line,
and if you look back, it disappears completely.

the same way sleeping through the night
became a chore after realizing
the most peculiar part about
you silhouetted in my doorway,
is that it’s
you.
Silhouetted in my doorway.

Across the cheap Ikea pine,
that comfortable laugh doomed me.

Like a worn-in afghan,
and the smell of wax papered spice cabinets.
It made me grateful beyond reason.

But still, the linoleum peels, and tube lights
flicker pop
back to dark.

So I savor the minute
spent lacing each eyelet of my faded hiking boots.
Making sure the door is locked twice before I leave,
trying not to wonder
where it is you go at night.

It's a morning for pages
pages and pages
droplets of coffee stained
jam thumbprints in the margin

It's a morning for pages
pen gliding across paper
ideas streaming from
no mind just a reflex

A morning for pages
fill them up with words
wondrous words of mischief and meaning
words of wonder and regret

It's a morning for pages
time to waste paper basket
the debris that clouds the brain
time to remedy what remains

A morning for pages
running the pen dry
reckoning of soul
making way for the rest of this day

when we get out
when i get out, i will dance with my eyes closed and my heart full
with my friends
we will sing songs
excited and pitchy and a little too loud
like our heart beats
tone deaf, but in sync nonetheless
we will hold each other like never before because now we know that at any moment, that string that connects our hearts and minds could be cut
when i get out i will take you to the moon, we can hop from star to star until we find what we are looking for
i will drive you to the edge of the earth just to hear your laugh and feel your warmth for as long as i can
we will spend hours trying to figure out how to fit our thumbprints together like puzzle pieces
we won’t stop until we get it
when i get out, the sun will
shine a little brighter than it had before
when we get out you will feel my love in every breath, deep or shallow, long or short
puffs of air littered with a trillion swarovski crystal hearts
just for you

Starting poetry again,
Was once a comfort and friend,
Now flames burn from ashes.
Paper transforms into an electric pulse,
From a hand extended outright and grasping for connection.

Together once more,
Was a friendship, loving, a journey through all that was life,
Not making narrative sense.
Now we rise as equal companions ready to slice letters with our thumbprints,
And tear at the nature of paper.

something
to break the ice
or instigate a February thaw

the impression of trees
the childish lollypop kind
and sky blue thumbprints

overhead
that meet the curves and crests
of chalky green

it's what's needed
to unfreeze the heart
and flow the tears

Whit Howland © 2019